The Silver Linings Playbook

Pat writes to Nikki. He does not blame her for remarrying or for cheating on him. However, he makes it clear that he believes they can still reconcile. He reminds Nikki that there were good times, including a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, and that he believes his desire to improve himself is a sign that they should be together. In her previous letter she recommended that he read Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Pat interprets this as her giving him a sign since he believes the book has a happy ending. He closes the letter by writing: “You are living with another man, you are remarried—what could be worse? I still love you. I will always love you and am only now ready to prove my love for you” (222).

Nikki writes that her only purpose in recommending Huckleberry Finn was because she thought Pat would enjoy it. She does remember the trip to Martha’s Vineyard but says it was so long ago that they were only children. Nikki restates that she loves her husband:  “I only wanted to give you a chance to say good-bye—to resolve any unresolved issues” (225).

Pat writes to Nikki, telling her that the Eagles lost to the Titans. During the game, McNabb, the quarterback, tore his ACL, ending his season. Pat’s father has stopped talking to him again, and Pat tries to remain hopeful: “I’m thinking this is the part of my movie where things appear as if nothing is going to work out” (226). He describes his recent conversations with Cliff, who says that he should pursue a relationship with Tiffany and be happy that Nikki has found a fulfilling life for herself. Pat begs Nikki to let him see her one time, face-to-face. He also reveals that he has been reading parts of Nikki’s letters to Cliff.

Nikki writes that she disapproves of Pat sharing their letters: “[B]y showing Cliff my letters, you have put me in a precarious legal position. I am not allowed to make contact with you by law, remember? So this will be my last letter, sorry” (230). Nikki regrets opening the dialogue with Pat because she does not believe he is interested in closure, only in winning her back. She ends the letter saying that she hopes he will take comfort in the fact that she reached out and wishes him well.

Pat writes to Nikki, asking her to meet him on Christmas Day, at dusk, at the place where he proposed to her. The brief letter ends with the line: “I feel as though you owe me this last request” (232).

Pat goes to candlelit Mass with his mother at St. Joseph’s. As the priest speaks, Pat prays to God, asking him to bring Nikki to meet him on Christmas. He also asks God to make sure the Eagles win on Christmas so that his father will be happy. After they are home, Ronnie, Veronica, Tiffany, and Emily come over. Pat’s mother helped him choose presents for them, which they open. They give Pat a signed photo of Hank Baskett. The inscription reads: “To Pat, You’re on the road to victory!” (237). As she leaves, Tiffany passes a note to Pat, which he unfolds in his room when he is alone.

In her final letter, Nikki terminates her communication with Pat: “I will not be writing more, nor will I be taking more calls from Tiffany, because I do not appreciate her yelling and cursing at me on your behalf. Do not try to contact me. The restraining order is still in effect” (239).

Pat lifts weights on Christmas morning. He believes that Nikki’s letter is a trick, and that the movie will be better if he thinks that she is not coming to visit him that evening. After opening presents, Pat tells his mother he is going for a run. In the garage, he changes into nice clothes, leaves, and takes a train to Philadelphia. He goes to a hill near a Japanese tea house, sits under a tree, and waits for Nikki. When it grows dark, he worries. He closes his eyes and prays for Nikki to come. When he opens his eyes, Tiffany is there. 

Tiffany tells Pat that she invented the liaison scenario to try to help him move past from Nikki, confessing that she wrote the letters to him: “I never even contacted Nikki. She doesn’t even know you’re sitting here” (245). 

Pat wants to hit her. He asks why she would do this to him, and Tiffany says it is because she’s in love with him. Pat begins to run. She tries to follow but can’t match his pace for long. As he runs, he prays angrily to God, wanting to know why he is being punished. Something hits his shins. Pat falls, and he sees a foot preparing to kick his face.

When Pat wakes, his loafers, overcoat, and money are gone, as is the watch his mother gave him for Christmas. He limps to the curb and sees a nativity scene on someone’s porch. The characters in the nativity all have black faces. Pat apologizes to God for his angry prayer and asks that he be shown the way to make “apart time” end. 

Pat tells the story of how he met Danny in the mental hospital. Danny had been an aspiring rapper named “Mad Nipper” who had just signed with a small record label. Although Danny always changed the details of the story, he was hit on the head during a fight and thrown into the harbor. When he came to the institution, he never spoke. Pat was the first one he began talking to after months of frustrating the speech therapists who came to visit him. 

Danny now comes out of the house with the nativity and sees Pat. Danny invites Pat inside to eat with him and his Aunt Jasmine. Danny says he left the mental hospital the previous day, which Pat interprets as a miracle. When Jasmine sees Pat’s injury, she calls 911 and takes him to a hospital. Doctors are putting Pat’s leg in a cast when Jake and Caitlin arrive with Pat’s mother. Tiffany had called them from a payphone and told them everything after Pat ran away. Jake tells Pat that the Eagles won, and he sounds angry. Pat realizes that he made Jake miss the game, and then he can’t stop crying.

December 29th is Pat’s birthday. His mother helps him shower—Pat can’t stand on his leg without help—and drives him to Cliff’s office. Pat tells Cliff that he has been in bed since Christmas and is not working out or reading. Danny visits him, and they play board games. 

Cliff tells Pat, “I know how you lost your memory. Everyone does. And I think you remember too. Do you?” (258). Because Pat is not progressing towards closure, Cliff believes they may need to alter their methods: “Your life is not a movie. Life is not a movie” (260). Pat believes that negative attitudes like Cliff’s are what ensure that movies end badly. 

Veronica, Caitlin, Jake, Ronnie, and Emily come to a birthday dinner that night at Pat’s house. Jake and Caitlin give him a membership to a nice gym in Philadelphia, where Jake hopes they can work out together. During a brief silence at dinner, Pat asks about Tiffany: “How is she?” (262).

Jake takes Pat to an Eagles game on the day of New Year’s Eve. After the Eagles win, they talk with the Asian Invasion about the playoffs. Jake leaves to meet Caitlin at a New Year’s Eve party. Pat rides home on the Asian Invasion bus. At midnight, he watches the Times Square celebration on TV with his mother. She says that it’s going to be a good year for them. After his mother falls asleep on the couch, she starts shivering. Pat knocks a VHS off the shelf in the closet while getting her a blanket. The case contains the VHS tape of his wedding reception, which he watches. 

As he and Nikki are announced, the Kenny G song “Songbird” begins playing. His mind “begins to melt” (270), and Pat remembers coming home to his house and hearing the shower running. “Songbird” was playing in the background. He finds Nikki in the shower with her lover. He beats the man so badly that Nikki hits Pat over the head with the CD player, causing him to fall and hit his head on the bathtub faucet, just above his right eyebrow. Pat’s memory ends, and he is watching the TV once more. The scar above his right eyebrow itches. Pat leaves a phone message for Jake that begins, “Jake, it’s your brother, Pat. I need a huge favor” (273).

Chapter 43 is a letter from Tiffany to Pat. She writes that Jake came to her house and threatened to kill her if she contacted him. Her therapist is disappointed in her, but Tiffany believes she tried to help Pat for the right reasons. Then she tells him something she has never told anyone. 

Her husband Tom was a cop. They were happy, but Tom needed to have sex several times a day. There was so much sex that Tiffany asked him if they could reduce the frequency just so that she could appreciate it more. Tom worried that this meant she didn’t love him anymore. 

Tom was popular with high school kids and founded a group that advocated against drunk driving. The day that Tiffany talked to him about sex, he was helping an old woman on the side of the road when a drunk driver struck and killed him. In his car was a bag from Victoria’s secret, with several pieces of lingerie that were Tiffany’s size: “But the only thing I could think about was how Tommy died believing I no longer wanted to have sex with him” (277). If he had not gone to Victoria’s Secret on his lunch break, he would not have been on the road where he was killed. Tiffany still feels guilty for his death. 

Weeks later she realized she was craving sex: “[S]o I started to fuck men—any man who was game” (277). Every time she slept with a man, she pretended he was Tommy, and she tried to match the frequency at which Tommy had always wanted to have sex. This led to her losing her job. At the dinner party, she admits that she had only wanted to have sex with Pat so that she could fantasize about Tommy, but that when they cried together outside her house, she realized she no longer wanted to have sex with strangers. 

The night that Pat’s mom was out drinking, she was with Tiffany and told her everything that had been happening in Pat’s house. They met weekly and became friends. She was angry at Tiffany for posing as Nikki in the letters, but “she knows about this letter obviously, since she delivered it” (279). Tiffany ends the letter asking if they can be friends and telling Pat that she misses him.

Pat watches Danny read Tiffany’s latest letter. They play Parcheesi for hours. Danny never comments on the letters, and Pat doesn’t know what to do.

A week after the doctors remove Pat’s cast, Pat is on a bridge in Knight’s Park. He considers jumping off the bridge and breaking through the ice. He sees Tiffany coming and is happy that she has accepted his invitation to meet. She apologizes again and says that she would have come to his birthday party if Jake and Ronnie hadn’t forbidden her. 

Pat tells her that he recently asked Jake to drive him to the old house where he used to live with Nikki. She still lives there with her husband, Phillip, the man Pat caught her with. He intended to confront her and tell her that he had no grudges, and that his memory had returned. From a block away, he and Jake watched Nikki and Phillip have a snowball fight with their two children, “and somehow that was enough for [him] to officially end apart time and roll the credits of [his] movie without even confronting Nikki” (286). Pat cries for a couple of minutes. When he finishes, Tiffany gives him a birthday present: laminated pages held together by a silver bolt. On the cover are the words “SKYWATCHER’S CLOUD CHART” (287). Tiffany noticed that Pat always watched the clouds when they ran and thought that he might like a guide to identify the shapes. They lie on a blanket together and watch the gray sky, hoping that a cloud will separate itself. Pat puts his arm around her. When it begins to snow, Tiffany whispers, “I need you, Pat Peoples; I need you so fucking bad” (288). 

Pat quietly reflects on the moment: “In my arms is a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I’m on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway” (289). Pat kisses her forehead and tells her, “I think I need you too” (289).